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More than 850 delegates flocked to a seminal conference in London on Saturday about the compatibility of modern evolutionary theory and Islamic theology – despite scaremongering and the refusal of Islamic student societies to participate. Determined organisers had overcome pressure to cancel by changing the venue from Imperial College to Logan Hall at the University of London. The event was the brainchild of the Deen Institute, which runs courses to promote critical thinking among Muslim students and kindle rational dialogue within Islam.

McGill University takes the lead implementing Universal Design… As a McGill University student with a learning disability, Cedric Yarish hates when professors rely on “chalk and talk.” What helps him with his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is when professors engage students in discussion, present their material in a variety of interesting ways and provide options for student evaluation, such as a choice between exams or papers or other types of multimedia projects.

Why do some seniors struggle to get up off the coach, whereas others hit the gym as if they were decades younger? A husband and wife research team at McGill wondered just that and embarked on a study to try to determine what makes some age better than others.Their quest has led them to invite 14 elderly athletes to Montreal for a series of tests. “I recruited, scouted and picked out all of the winners who came in first, second and third in their events and invited them all to Montreal for the week,” explained McGill Exercise Physiologist Tanja Taivassalo.

(John Bergeron): Canada is a strong nation economically, with a $1.7-trillion gross domestic product and spending on research and development in excess of $30 billion annually. By any measure these numbers are among the best in the world. But pharmaceutical research, once strong, is in decline in this country.

Canadian women should start being routinely screened for cervical cancer at a later age than previously recommended and do it less frequently than has been the norm until now, new national guidelines recommend. The guidance suggests cervical cancer screening should begin at age 25 and continue until age 69, at three year intervals. For years, women were advised to get an annual Pap smear, though in recent years a number of countries have lengthened the intervals between tests. Dr.

A report elucidates the widely recognized, but poorly understood, concept of gene-environment interaction, finding a molecular mechanism in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder: demethylation of a glucocorticoid response element in the stress response regulator FKBP5 that depends on both the risk allele and childhood trauma. [Review on epigenetics and childhood trauma by McGill's Moshe Szyf.]

The underground aquifers that store more than 90 percent of Earth's liquid freshwater are at risk of being sucked dry. A study published in Nature in August showed that annual demand from the world's 783 large regional aquifers is 3.5 times the amount that is replenished. The impact could be profound: Groundwater sustains nearly 2 billion people and provides almost 40 percent of crop irrigation worldwide. Tom Gleeson, a hydrologist at McGill University, calculated each major aquifer's footprint—the area needed to sustain its use—and compared that with the actual size of the aquifer.

A biodiversity map drawn up by British naturalist Russel Wallace in 1876 depicting how life evolved on our continents has been updated after 136 years. Technological advances and data on more than 20,000 species have allowed a team of 15 international researchers 20 years to map biodiversity in greater detail. The map shows the division of nature into 11 large biogeographic realms and how they relate to each other, the journal Science reports.

Scientists are using video games to tap the collective intelligence of people around the world, while doctors and educators are turning to games to treat and teach. […] “MSA is probably one of the most important tools in bioinformatics today,” says Jérôme Waldispühl, a bioinformatician at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. But the computer algorithms employed to perform MSA don’t guarantee perfect accuracy, so Waldispühl and colleagues created Phylo — an online game that transforms the MSA problem into a simple puzzle that anyone can play.